Saturday pregame Avalanche-Blackhawks

CHICAGO – It’s pretty early here on a Saturday morning, and I’d like to still be sleeping probably, but am not. Partially, that’s because it’s too cold in the room. Why? Because of these stupid new thermometers in hotel rooms that are impossible to figure out. I turn it up to what says 75 degrees, and it blows hot air for a while, then it blows really cold air. I try to adjust the settings and everything basically goes haywire from there, with little numbers and hieroglyphics making no sense at all to me. Can we please, hotel operators, just go back to the old “slide the lever a little more to the right for hot, a little to the left for colder” thermometers and leave the ones where you need a computer science degree to use in the garbage, so I don’t have to be freezing my butt off on a Saturday morning??? Thanks.

Seeing that I’m up then, might as well blog a little. I’ll make my way to the morning skate soon enough at the United Center, where the Avs visit the Blackhawks again tonight. Obviously, this will be a tough game to win, with the Hawks off to a 4-1-1 start, in what figures to be a loud, sold out building on a weekend night.

I doubt we’ll see as many Avs fans in the stands as the hundreds of Hawks sweaters that were in the Pepsi Center for Thursday’s game. I’m not going to get into that whole topic of attendance and atmosphere at the Can again here. I’ve riffed on that too many times already, but suffice to say it’s still way too much of a home-rink feeling for the Hawks and Red Wings when they come to town.

In tomorrow’s paper, my Sunday NHL column will focus mostly on what the Avs need to do, from my perspective, now that Peter Mueller again is out with a “head” injury. The Avs didn’t want to have to deal with this problem again, of course, but it’s reality and now the heat is on Greg Sherman and Joe Sacco to do something about it. So I won’t get into all that here, but also suffice to say there will need to be some kind of move made should Mueller be on the shelf long – and this has every look and feel to it of being another lengthy absence. Hey, maybe Mueller is on the ice at practice Monday and things go well. But are you optimistic that he’ll be in the lineup anytime soon? Didn’t think so.

A few other things:
– Good story by colleague Mike Chambers today on Matt Hunwick staying patient as the odd-man out on defense. Call it a hunch, but I have a feeling we might see Hunwick tonight.

– I think plus-minus is somewhat misleading at times, so I wouldn’t get too worried about Erik Johnson’s minus-7 right now. I think he’s been better than that, though obviously he’s going to want to turn that number around.

– Remember Peter Ruttgaizer, former Avs in-studio host at Altitude? He’s now doing the same job with the Islanders for MSG. Here’s a story on that.

– My latest podcast, with special guest Ken Hitchcock, is available free at iTunes. Click here.

– See you for a live chat of the game tonight, right here on this blog. For a few of you who have asked why I don’t do in-game updates on Twitter anymore: because I’m not here to make Twitter rich and because it’s just better this other way. It’s a much better in-game experience for you, the fan, and me, the reporter, doing a live chat where we can talk in more than 140 characters and can have something much more resembling a real conversation in real time about the game only – as opposed to talking like this: “Duchene scores for #avs at on asst frm #hejduk.”
For The Denver Post, we also get the benefit of the “traffic” coming to the blog, as opposed to giving it all to Twitter and making the pointy-headed geeks there richer. Hey don’t get me wrong, I like Twitter and lord knows I’ve put out a lot of tweets, and will continue to use it. But it’s not going to happen during games anymore. It’s just a better deal for all involved to chat live on a blog than constantly tweet.

Why don’t the Avs give a call to Jean-Pierre Dumont? The guy is a pure scorer, not afraid to get in front of the net…

KG

that is a great idea, i was thinking that would be a good move even before the season started

LondonAvBrad

I’m here in Chicago too A.D all the way from the U.K will have my Avs jersey on, so you should see one, hopefully!!

Avrilanche

Completely agree. The Avs desperately need help on their top line wings. Jones and Hejduk have been good, but Lindstrom has had one good game and Kobasew is not guy you want as your top line winger. Too risky to rely on Mules now…

Avrilanche

Attendance has been good both games so far, but like AD said, there have been a lot of Detroit and Chicago fans during each of those respective games. Don’t know what’s better, a half empty arena or an arena filled up with half of the other team’s fans?? We’ll see how attendance is when the Avs start playing teams like Phoenix and Dallas, who have had worse attendance that we have.

jimbo

An arena filled with fans, no matter which team they’re rooting for, is better for at least two obvious reasons: 1, it’s infinitely more fun than being at a quiet, half-empty arena, and 2, it represents ticket money that ultimately supports the Avs.

These people, for the most part, are not fans from Chicago or Detroit who have traveled to Denver for the game. They are Colorado hockey fans who, when their favorite team is in town, are plunking down money to watch an NHL game. As long as the Colorado hockey fan is coming to Avalanche games, it shouldn’t be an issue who they root for. They should be welcomed at the Pepsi Center, as it is proof that Denver is a good hockey market with plenty of fans to support the NHL.

rbrown_68

I think at this point there are more Detroit natives living in Denver than Detroit. Against lesser teams the Joe looks half full at best these days. This has nothing to do with the quality of hockey, just economics. On the topic of trades, I would agree that the avs need to acquire a LW before too long. JP Dumont was mentioned above and is available according to the Hockey news. He was bought out by Nashville and did not resign anywhere. He is versatile, quick, and I can’t imagine this team would not be helped by one more veteran. Also, does anyone have some insight on the status of Brandon Yip. He’s not ever going to be a top line guy, but would provide one more option to move at wing.

Puckmeup

Most of the people residing in Colorado are transplants from other regions so we’re bound to see fans of different teams all over the place in Denver. But there are a lot of Wings and Hawks fans here who have never even visited either city, let alone, grew up there. Denver used to be one of the most die-hard cities for sports fans over decades. But we saw a shift of support towards “outside teams” during the Broncos v Raiders in the late 70’s, early 80’s and all of the sudden, we started seeing more and people wearing sports jerseys from other teams.

Do you guys remember when the Patriots sucked and you didn’t see a single Patriots jersey EVER anywhere in Denver until Brady came along and they became a championship team? Or when nobody cared about the Chicago Bulls in the least bit until M.J. came along and changed the face of basketball like no player ever did? Then all of the sudden we started seeing other teams memorabilia being advertised all over the place and everyone started claiming a particular team as their favorite? Well, the same is true for Hockey and other sports teams in that we have a lot of people here who simply cheer for the WINNING team and not necessarily because they’ve always been their favorite team.

That’s only reason I love this blog, because it’s so awesome reading about fans talking about their favorite Hockey club and who haven’t sold out because we haven’t won the Cup in a while. True fans will never sell out…NO MATTER WHAT!!!

GO AVALANCHE!!!!!!!!!

Smell the Glove

It doesn’t seem to bother the Rockies and Coors Field when the Cubs come to town. The team does a really nice job of welcoming Cubs fans while still, obviously, hoping for a Rockies win. This is why I love going to Coors Field to root for the Rockies for the rest of the games, when I’m not wearing my Cubs jersey.

jimbo

Speaking of baseball, I was at a Yankees/Blue Jays game in Toronto a few years back, and their PA announcer actually came on at the end of the game to thank all the Yankee fans who had made their way up to Toronto for the series! I remember just thinking that was really cool, classy thing to do… made me think pretty highly of the Blue Jay organization.

That’s the way it ought to be if you ask me… there’s plenty of room at the Pepsi Center for Blackhawk fans to sit and enjoy their team the two times they come to Denver. I’ve never understood the crankiness when fans of the other team are in the house, I think it just adds to the experience.

Smell the Glove

I don’t really understand why people get so fired up in general about the success of their team. I mean, if the Avs are last in the league and give Washington the #1 overall pick next year it really doesn’t affect my life or emotional well being. But some Avs fans will lose their mind over it.

Heartwarming story: Years and years ago at the height of the Wings and Avs rivalry I sat with my girlfriend in the nosebleeds and another couple sat in front of us in their Wings jerseys. We didn’t know them but we had a good time taunting each other all night as the Avs and Wings exchanged goals. I can’t even remember who the Av player was but they scored a hat trick and the Red Wings fan in front of me actually threw his hat down as hard as he could. I mean we were up top so it was never gonna make it on to the ice. I just thought that was the greatest, so I bought him a couple of beers.

We all had a great time, regardless of who won- which is really the goal at the end of the day. Although maybe it’s just us Cubs fans who learn that lesson so young.

Terry Frei graduated from Wheat Ridge High School in the Denver area and has degrees in history and journalism from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He worked for the Rocky Mountain News while attending CU and joined the Post staff after graduation. He has also worked at the Oregonian in Portland, Ore., and The Sporting News. His seventh book, March 1939: Before the Madness, was issued in February 2014.

Chambers covers college and professional hockey for The Denver Post. He has written for the Post since 1994, after dumping his first 9-to-5 office job a couple years out of college. He primarily follows the University of Denver hockey team and helps cover the Avalanche.